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I hunt plane ticket deals like it’s my job and do my best to take advantage of deals when I find them, as often as possible. A few months ago a $121* round trip ticket from Philadelphia (PHL) to San Diego (SAN) came across my screen and I hopped on it.

The more I travel, the lighter my bag gets and the days of what if and maybe I’ll need are basically gone. Now I can fit everything I need into a 50L Marmot Duffel for trips around a week, and have never had an issue using it as a carry-on. Longer trips or ones where I won’t have access to doing laundry I’ll use a Deuter 65L Travel Backpack that can easily be checked. I’m still a late packer, often doing it just hours before leaving and never using a list. This leads to the first of my issues, and fortunately the one that brings me the least pain.

On my recent trip to Iceland I went laptop free, which meant I’d have no way to dump images as memory cards filled up. Having 128GB card and two 64GB cards might sound like enough, but as previously mentioned my anticipation was some long time-lapse setups through the 18+ hours of darkness. This meant adding more storage in the form of memory cards.

Adverse weather conditions will happen at the most inopportune moments, and usually cause most travelers a great deal of anxiety leading up to a trip. Even the most careful of planning can go sideways, and if you travel enough, will at some point. When this happens, look for the experience you can gain from it and don’t dwell on the photograph you’ve been planning on making for the months preceding the trip.

This is not an artistic photo with some deep meaning, this is the last photo I shot in a sequence before the water that’s hitting my camera wiped me on my ass and soaked me. None of my camera gear or belongings were ruined, just some bloody knees and shins, cut the webbing between my thumb and forefinger and a bruised ego.